The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (424536) Flight Sergeant Leslie James McGregor, No. 106 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Second World War

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Richard Cruise, the story for this day was on (424536) Flight Sergeant Leslie James McGregor, No. 106 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Second World War.

424536 Flight Sergeant Leslie James McGregor, No. 106 Squadron, Royal Air Force
KIA 25 June 1944
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 28 December 2014

Today we pay tribute to Flight Sergeant Leslie James McGregor, who was killed in the service of the Royal Air Force in 1944.

Born on 21 December 1923 in the Sydney suburb of Canterbury, Leslie McGregor was the son of Roy Hilton McGregor and Mary McGregor. We know very little of his early life, but after finishing school he was employed at Potter and Birks, a pharmaceutical warehouse in Gore Hill in northern Sydney.

On 12 September 1942 McGregor enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force and began training as a wireless operator. The following year he embarked for overseas service.

As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, McGregor was one of almost 27,000 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners, and engineers who joined Royal Air Force and Royal Australian Air Force squadrons in Britain throughout the course of the war.

Upon arriving in Britain McGregor undertook further specialist training before being posted in May 1944 to No. 106 Squadron, Royal Air Force. As part of Bomber Command, No. 106 Squadron was equipped with the four-engine Avro Lancaster heavy bomber. There he joined a crew of two other Australian and four British airmen. With McGregor as wireless operator, they flew six missions.

Following the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944, the Germans launched a terror-bombing campaign on London and southern England using a new weapon, the V-1, rocket, or “flying bomb”. Between June and October 1944, V-1 attacks on Britain resulted in the deaths of 10,000 people.

On the night of 24 June 1944 McGregor’s Lancaster was taking part in a bombing raid on the V-1 Rocket launch site at Pommeravel. It was on this mission that the aircraft crashed near the village of Bully, near Neufchatel in Upper Normandy, north-west of Rouen. Flight Sergeant Leslie McGregor was 20 years old.

All the Australians, including McGregor, were killed in the crash, along with two of the Britons. Only two crewmembers, who managed to bail out, survived and returned to Allied lines and back to Britain.

The Mayor of Bully reported that the bodies were recovered from the crashed Lancaster and buried in a nearby cemetery. Their remains were later re-interred at the British War Cemetery at St Sever on the outskirts of Rouen.

McGregor’s name – along with those of the Australian members of his crew – is listed here on the Roll of Honour on my left, along with around 40,000 Australians killed in the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Flight Sergeant Leslie James McGregor, and all of those Australians – as well as our Allies and brothers in arms – who gave their lives in the hope for a better world.

Dr Lachlan Grant
Historian, Military History Section